A hybrid filter based on anisotropic diffusion for medical ultrasound images

作者：Zhang Xin Yu^*; Chen Huan; Wang Tian Fu; Wang Rui; Chen Si Ping

来源：Journal of Shenzhen University Science and Engineering, 2008, 25(4): 397-402.

• Anisotropic diffusion
• Image denoising
• Isotropic diffusion
• Median filter
• Medical ultrasound image

A hybrid filtering method based on anisotropic diffusion for ultrasound speckle suppression was proposed. This method was designed to take advantage of the different denoising properties of three techniques:isotropic diffusion filter, improved AD filter and adaptive impulse noise filter. The hybrid filtering method was a combination of three filters working according to the different ranges of local gradient. The optimal value of four key parameters, including Gaussian smoothing coefficient σ, step size Δt, gradient threshold Ymin and Ymax, in the hybrid method were determined in the experiments on hundreds of images. The results have shown that, in comparison with median filtering and speckle reducing anisotropic diffusion (SRAD) filtering, the hybrid method had better performance in noise reduction, edge preservation, stability and suitability, and it was approximately 50 times faster than the SRAD, indicating that it is an efficient and effective method of medical ultrasonic image filtering.

• 出版日期2008